Profit motive more dependable than government bureaucrats

State insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler has ordered Regence BlueShield to resume selling child-only insurance policies [“WA orders Regence to resurrect child-only plans,” seattletimes.com, Oct. 15].

Regence (and insurance companies across the country) recently made the sound business decision to stop selling these policies because of the new federal law forbidding them to exclude children with pre-existing conditions.

To force a company to sell policies without considering pre-existing conditions, means that what Regence would be selling would not be insurance. Insurance takes risk into account. Kreidler is forcing Regence to make a bad business decision, on which they cannot possibly make any money.

Government is strangling the business of medicine and the business of medical insurance with more and more regulations. Then, when the regulations create a disaster, bureaucrats vilify medical professionals and insurance companies for wanting to make a profit.

Capitalism, the political system that protects individual rights to property and contract, is the moral and practical way to provide goods and services. I would far rather depend on the profit motive than the whim of a bureaucrat.

— Maryallene Otis, Lynnwood